Tired “She can be seen in our faces,” conceded Irene Paredes, one of the authoritative voices of the Spanish team’s locker room. They have barely slept four hours each night for the past few weeks. Until they reached an eternal meeting, which did not end until five in the morning, and two training sessions to which they arrived out of shape and with their minds elsewhere. “We are footballers, but we have had to get it into our heads that we cannot just be footballers,” said Alexia Putellas, the undisputed leader of this team, on the field and in the locker room. This Thursday, also in the press room of the Gamla Ullevi stadium, in the city of Gothenburg, where Sweden, the best team in the ranking of FIFA, will face Spain, second in the classification and recent world champion.
There, in the first match they will play after winning the World Cup, the national team’s players gave all the explanations that were asked of them, denounced them and provided the necessary context so that it is understood that their fight is in defense of their teammate Jenni Hermoso, who the former president of the federation Luis Rubiales planted a kiss on his nose without consent, but it goes back a long time. “We had been demanding that they listen to us for quite some time, we knew that for decades there had been systemic discrimination against women. We had to fight a lot to be heard. That, as you know, entails wear and tear that we do not want to have. What worries us is the field, winning, and that people celebrate the victories with us,” said Putellas.
Spain’s 11 added: “Yesterday it was a month since the World Cup. Some unacceptable events occurred with the last straw with the subsequent assembly. It couldn’t be, we didn’t want to continue down that path. We had to say zero tolerance. First for her, also for us and so that it doesn’t happen again.”
In the meeting that ended this Monday at dawn, the footballers made fundamental commitments that will serve to improve the structures of Spanish football, but also to fight against sexist behavior and abuse. “The three-way meeting was constructive, agreements were reached that we believe are important to move forward. We know that there are things that take time. But we took them at their word, they committed to it. It takes a while, but the changes are already happening,” Putellas added.
One of the points they are most proud of is the commitment to develop an action protocol for when cases of harassment or abuse of power like the one experienced in Sydney happen again. “We want this to be a mirror in which they can look at themselves, so that they can identify with us and know what to do,” assumed Paredes, who did not mind being able to denounce that in this last month they have felt alone and helpless by the institutions that They should defend them: “The CSD entered, but arrived late. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again, but if something like this happens again there have to be protocols so that action is taken at the same moment things happen,” he concluded.
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